Rep. Lamar Smith's Regulation-Busting Bill Will Compromise Public Health, Raise The Cost of Government

November 15, 2011 11:06 am ET —
Brian Powell

The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Lamar
Smith (R-TX), has pushed H.R.
3010
— the Regulatory Accountability Act — through committee, and it's now
awaiting consideration for a vote in the House. Despite its legislative success
thus far, the bill is highly controversial. In addition to being tailored to benefit
big political donors to Chairman Smith, experts believe H.R. 3010 is a drastic,
fiscally irresponsible bill that could compromise public health.

The bill's stated
purpose is to "reform the process by which Federal agencies analyze and
formulate new regulations and guidance documents." In reality, the bill would
dramatically restructure the regulatory process, requiring enforcement agencies
to always choose the least expensive rule even if it isn't the most effective.
OMB Watch describes
how this could affect public health and safety regulations by overriding at
least 25 important health, safety and environmental laws and conflicting with
the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air
Act:

While such a provision
sounds reasonable on its face, experience under the Toxic Substances Control
Act (TSCA) has shown that requiring the least costly alternative as the
standard essentially forbids agencies from issuing protective rules. In 1991, a
federal court found that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had not
adequately analyzed every possible alternative asbestos regulation - even
though the agency had spent ten years and millions of dollars considering
alternatives and developed a 45,000-page record of their findings. Since that
ruling, EPA has not even attempted to regulate chemicals under TSCA because, as
the CEO of SC Johnson put it, "Your child has a better chance of becoming
a major league baseball player than a chemical has of being regulated [under
TSCA]."

Even more concerning,
the RAA would run roughshod over many laws that are crucial to protecting the
health and safety of Americans. One of these, the Occupational Safety and
Health Act, requires that regulations be issued when "reasonably necessary
or appropriate to provide safe or healthful employment." Comparable
requirements exist in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Mine Safety
and Health Act, and at least twenty-one other major statutes. The RAA demands
that, "notwithstanding any other provision of law," cost-benefit
analysis must always be the first consideration.

The RAA could have a negative impact on more than
just health regulations. For individuals concerned about government spending
and an overly complex bureaucratic process, the RAA serves only to make things
more expensive and more complicated. Frank Knapp, Jr., president of the South
Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, lays out his concerns
in The Hill:

[A] thorough reading of
the RAA leads to three conclusions. First, the bill will likely to dramatically
drive up the cost of almost every rule-making process and budget of a federal
agency. Second, federally elected officials will be stripped of their ability
to responsibly lead our country. And third, the RAA is a highway to
never-ending lawsuits by special interests against the federal government. [...]

There is no way to
describe the RAA in any other simpler terms than to call it what it is-a
budget-busting, anti-democracy, Corporate Attorneys Full Employment Act.

It is no wonder then
that supporters of the RAA are primarily U.S.-based multinational corporations.
Increasing the cost of government for taxpayers is not a concern to these
corporations that use offshore tax havens and other deceptive accounting
practices to avoid paying their fair share of U.S. taxes. If federal agency
budgets must be increased because of the RAA, it won't be the multinationals
footing the bill.